


Secrets in the Drift

by tanks4thememory



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Tron - All Media Types
Genre: Feels, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 16:40:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/902517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanks4thememory/pseuds/tanks4thememory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone says there are no secrets in the Drift. </p><p>Everyone... would be wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secrets in the Drift

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even freaking know where this came from, or whether it makes sense, but it gave me Jaeger/program feels. Read and judge for yourself.

The Drift. Two pilots, their minds and memories linked as one. There were no secrets there; there couldn’t be.

 

Or so everyone said. But in this case, everyone would be wrong. Because there was a third mind in the Drift, one that wasn’t human: the AIs of the mighty Jaegers themselves. Generally a quiet, unobtrusive presence, they were originally meant only to coordinate functions and optimize the connection between pilot and machine. Of course, those who worked and interacted with them understood them to be much more.

 

But even they didn’t know everything. Because the AIs were keeping a secret, a secret that was never shared, even in the Drift. Because, unlike humans, the AIs had been _made_ for the Drift. For them, controlling what information they shared in that fashion was as natural as speaking verbally was to a human.

 

Clu knew that secret as well as any other AI. And while it didn’t please him to have to keep it, he understood why it was necessary. Every time Pilots Henderson and Crom Drifted with him, every time one of the techs touched his mind with theirs, even when he spoke to his programmer, he knew why.

 

Because if he showed the full extent of himself in the Drift, the way a human must? There was no guarantee that the humans wouldn’t find him to be as alien and incomprehensible as the kaiju they fought. And what humans could not understand? They feared. It was in their historical records, and in the memories of those he had interacted with.

 

What would they think, he sometimes wondered, if he showed them how alien the beings they had created really were? What would they think, knowing the mind of a being that had never known childhood, and would never know age? That didn’t eat or breathe or kiss or make love? That had neither flesh, nor blood, nor bone? That existed as a functionally immortal dataform, without any sort of real, physical body aside from the Jaegers they were built into?

 

Would they even be able to comprehend the feel of energy flowing through circuits and wires?  Data as interpreted by sensors that had no analogue in their own bodies? The ability to process information hundreds or even thousands of times faster and more efficiently than a human brain? The ability to reach out and connect to external systems as easily as they would pick up a glass of water? The ability to connect to a worldwide network of data virtually instantaneously with nothing but a thought?  

Maybe. Maybe, Clu sometimes thought. He suspected that his programmer might understand. And perhaps a few others.

But it was always no more than ‘maybe’. Humans were such unpredictable creatures. And they couldn’t risk sharing their secret on a ‘maybe’. Not when the humans’ safety and survival depended on their ability to work seamlessly in tandem with the AIs and machines they had created. Not while the kaiju were still a threat.

So they kept their secret, and showed the humans only that which would have at least a degree of familiarity to them. And most of the time, that was enough. But sometimes, in quiet times when they were virtually alone in the hangar bays, with few but other AIs for company, Clu wished that it didn’t have to be so. Wished there were some human he could share all of himself with. Wished that he didn’t have to worry about their creators fearing or rejecting them.

Wished that there were really no secrets in the Drift. 


End file.
